


Patience is Your Virtue

by queenvandal



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Boys Kissing, Harry Potter Next Generation, M/M, Room of Requirement, Truth Serum, Veritaserum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-04-28 11:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5089763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenvandal/pseuds/queenvandal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it takes a little veritaserum to find out when you’re really being honest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patience is Your Virtue

**Author's Note:**

> I came into this with much grander plans, but ended up not being able to fulfill them due to RL obligations. I do hope you enjoy what I came up with anyway, capitu, I had a lot of fun! :) 
> 
> P.S. Thanks to R for the last-minute beta!

“Merlin, I _hate_ you.” The words slipped out under his breath, and immediately Scorpius knew something was wrong.

It wasn’t that the statement was untrue—quite the opposite, he meant it completely. The problem was that he could feel the venom—the _sincerity_ —colouring his voice. Scorpius couldn’t remember the last time he had said anything with such honesty. It had just… _come out_.

“What’s that, Malfoy?” shouted James Potter from across the room. Scorpius fired a curse in hopes of shutting him up, but missed, instead bringing down a nearby pile of burnt-up furniture on top of his opponent.

Scorpius swore and ran over to Potter, spelling away the debris to reveal an unconscious Potter, covered in soot. He was checking for a pulse when he felt Potter stir. He blinked up at Scorpius with his infuriatingly common brown eyes, gaze snapping into focus immediately when Scorpius cast a quick _Enervate_.

Potter grinned. “Sloppy… but effective. Good work, Malfoy.”

Scorpius rolled his eyes. “I thought I killed you.” His heart was still hammering away in his chest, apparently unaware that the danger had passed. A few broken bones were one thing, but what would his father say if he killed Harry Potter’s son? He stood up and attempted to wipe the black dust off of his pristine dueling gloves. He sighed, exasperated. They would never be perfectly white again, no matter how many cleaning charms he applied.

He surveyed the mess they had made—not that the room had been much to begin with. The Room of Requirement had a habit of filling their requested rooms with charred bits of broken furniture and other blackened rubble. It was some Hogwarts founder’s idea of “charming”, Scorpius supposed. In any case, it did make for a fine dueling arena. Half the spells he and Potter liked to use had been banned within school walls for centuries, but the instructors never seemed to find out about what happened in there.

Scorpius watched the other boy rise to his feet, graceful like the Seeker he should have been. Since sustaining a wrist injury, he had been forced to give up the position on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Filling up his new-found free time was one of the reasons he had even agreed to tutor Scorpius in Defense Against the Dark Arts, the only subject that Scorpius was not naturally proficient at—an irony that everyone enjoyed. As long as Potter wore a support brace, he could still perform most spellwork frustratingly well, but Quidditch was out of the question.

Still, despite the lack of a formal training regimen, he had somehow managed to keep his Seeker physique intact just fine, annoying Scorpius to no end in the process. Why did things come so easily when you were a Potter?

Potter caught him looking and shot him his usual annoying grin. He had a habit of showing all of his abnormally large teeth when he smiled, which should have made him look like a deranged thestral or something, but actually made him look rather…agreeable? Scorpius couldn’t put his finger on it.

Scorpius, on the other hand, knew that he himself had a remarkably aristocratic look about him, and had to actively work to appear as anything other than a snobbish ponce (which he admittedly might be, but he found that, these days, affluent assholes weren’t much in demand among prospective suitors).

“Want to take a break, Malfoy?” James asked, snapping him out of his contemplation.

“Yes, truly,” Scorpius replied immediately, and then froze. There it was again.

Usually, when they were nearing exhaustion to the point of no longer being able to tell their curses from their hexes and their swishes from their flicks, one of them would ask if they wanted to take a break, and then the other would reply with a half-hearted ‘ _In your dreams!_ ’ and they would fire a few rounds back and forth until inevitably one of them was knocked out. The other would take a rest, before reviving the fallen one after twenty minutes or so. It was becoming something like a tradition, really.

Of course Scorpius truly _did_ want to take a break, but he would obviously rather perish than let Potter know that. He looked up slowly, expecting shock, accusations, or at least a bit of ridicule. Potter just shrugged amiably. “How about over there?” he asked, pointing at a blackish lump that might once have been some kind of object for sitting.

Scorpius was too flustered to protest, so instead he sat down, knowing full well that his dueling trousers would never recover. He had bigger things to worry about. What in Merlin’s name was happening to him? Had he been cursed? He couldn’t remember Potter casting any nonverbals during their session today—and Potter did so love to gloat about those—but nothing he had said out loud could have an effect like this, either. Maybe it had been before the duel? Had someone poisoned him? Scorpius could feel the panic rising in him.

Meanwhile, Potter was puttering around, completely oblivious as usual. “Hmm, I’ve always wondered whether this would work…” he said, standing in front of a mostly unscathed wardrobe. Potter cleared his throat before enunciating every excruciating syllable: “I. Re. Quire. A. Ham. Sand. Wich.”

He opened the wardrobe and, low and behold, a sandwich was sitting on top of some old robes inside. Without hesitating, Potter picked it up and took a huge bite. His eyebrows shot upward with glee. “A bit toasty on the sides, but other than that, it’s great. D’you want some?”

Scorpius couldn’t think of anything he would like less in the world. What kind of person ate a sandwich that they found in a mouldy old cupboard? The depths that Potter sunk to with each new tutoring session never failed to dismay him.

“You are the most disgusting person I have ever encountered,” he said. Potter nodded and mumbled something through his sandwich—Scorpius couldn’t decide whether it sounded more like “fair enough” or “aw thanks”.

Scarfing down the last few crumbs, Potter asked, “You want to continue?”

“ _No_ ,” Scorpius said emphatically. “Well. Erm. Yes? I don’t know.” The words slipped out of his mouth like oil. For the first time in his life, he was having a tough time reeling himself in. It was extremely embarrassing. Silence and restraint were exact arts that the Malfoys had perfected long ago, passing them down through each generation. Scorpius felt his cheeks go pink, glad that his Father, at least, could not see him. “I mean, just a little longer… _please_.”

Potter turned to him, eyebrow raised. “Say, Malfoy… You sure are rather _chatty_ today. Anything in particular you wanted to talk about?” His Cheshire grin was stretching to an implausible width. Scorpius was certain he would be able to make out his molars in a moment or two.

Scorpius wasn’t sure whether Potter somehow suspected his condition, or if it was just Potter being Potter. He wondered if there was some way to tell the truth without telling _all_ of the truth.

He steeled himself, trying again. “ _No_ , Potter, I don’t have anything in particular to say to you. Except… except that you are a pompous and untal—okay, talented—prat, and you are utterly annoying, and you should stop acting so entitled and showing off all the time and being so, so… _you_ , and—” Scorpius clamped his mouth shut. This was not going well.

“Well,” Potter said, rising and stretching out his limbs with a feline sort of grace. “I’m glad we can be so _honest_ with one another. Tell me, is that all you think of me? Or was there more?” He smiled, maybe a little too innocently.

Scorpius tried keeping his mouth closed, but that tactic lasted for all of two seconds before he blurted out, “NO—well, I mean, _no_ , I also think… I think you’re, you’re too charming, y’know, for your own good. For anyone’s. Why are you such a… such a _Potter_ , you’re so—ugh, what is happening?” Scorpius had never felt so ineloquent. He got up and took a few steps to straighten his thoughts. He turned around—and jumped. Potter was already right behind him. “Merlin, you are _so_ —”

“So charming?” Potter asked with a smirk, stopping just inches away.

Scorpius glared at him. “Moronic. Yes, that’s exactly it, you are a complete and utter moron. And that’s why it is _so_ bloody annoying that I’m… I—” 

“You what?”

“I… I—don’t make me… say it, you prat,” Scorpius ground his teeth. Maybe sheer stubbornness was the key to beating this thing.

“Say?” Potter considered him, eyes heavy. “You—” He cut off his own words, brushing his lips against Scorpius’s, instead. For a moment, Scorpius considered pulling back, but thought better of it, and leaned in.

His breath hitched as the other boy explored the lines of his lips, the grooves of his teeth, the texture of his tongue. His hips burned where Potter’s fingertips rested, digging in with every muffled groan. Scorpius kissed him back, hard, letting his torrent of words be swallowed up in their frenzied movements. Soon, he found he was scarcely aware of the things he was murmuring as Potter trailed kisses along his jaw.

He pulled away, barely taking a breath, the words still trickling out, “—and all of those times that I watched you training for Quidditch; you were _so_ —”

Scorpius let out a gasp as Potter began exploring his neck, letting his hands drift further and further up the small of his back, under his shirt.

“And the first time I saw you in the showers, I mean, I knew you wouldn’t be small, but I didn’t think you would be _that_ big—”

Potter snorted and captured his mouth again—mostly to shut him up, Scorpius suspected, and was grateful for—teasing his bottom lip until it was sore. Scorpius shuddered, before something unpleasant occurred to him.

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” he said, pulling away.

“Hmm, what’s that?” Potter asked into his neck.

“I think I’m in bloody love with you,” he said in horror.

Potter pulled back, sighing. “An entire vial of veritaserum in your pumpkin juice and you only _think_ you’re in love with me? How much will it take to unstopper those repressed feelings, Malfoy? I’m not sure how much longer I can take it.”

Scorpius scowled and made to take out his wand, but Potter was already off of him and disappearing under an arch of elegantly stacked tomes. “Come find me, Malfoy, and you can finish telling me all about those times you watched me training for Quidditch,” he said, letting out something like a cackle.

Scorpius sighed, immediately realizing how futile it was to try to get revenge on James Potter. He shrugged and took off after him anyway—he intended to make good on that offer, at the very least.

_The End._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! You can show your appreciation for the author in a comment here or on [livejournal](http://hp-nextgen-fest.livejournal.com/91304.html).


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